Understanding a normative concept like oppression requires attention to not only its harms but also the causes of those harms. In other words, a complete understanding of such a concept requires a proper causal explanation. This causal explanation can also inform and constrain our moral response to such harms. Therefore, the conceptual explanatory framework that we use to inform our moral diagnosis and our moral response become significant. The first goal of this dissertation is to propose complexity theory as the (...) proper framework for not only explaining a social phenomenon like oppression but also understanding the proper sites for social change. The second goal of this dissertation is to answer three interrelated questions about how we should respond, morally, to a chronic and complex social problem like racial or gender inequality: (1) Why do the current interventions to address these problems fail? (2) Do social movements play any unique role in addressing these problems? (3) What is our individual responsibility to participate in social movements? In response, I argue that the explanatory frameworks that we choose to understand the cause(s) of social problems can be the source of the inadequacy of our intervention. I argue that a proper social and moral intervention needs to capture the complex and dynamic nature of the social world. I also show that changing the explanatory framework allows us to see the unique role social movements play in making effective and sustainable social change possible. Finally, I conclude supporting such movements is a moral imperative. (shrink)

Models of choice over menus aim at capturing the effect of some behavioral or non-standard element of decision-making on the behavior of a single decision-maker. These models are usually compared with the standard model of choice over menus, in which the decision-maker chooses a menu whose best item is better than that of all other available ones. However, in many empirical settings such as experimental studies, choice data come from a population of decision-makers with possibly heterogeneous attitudes and tastes. This (...) heterogeneity can make the observed choices over menus stochastic. This fact calls for a stochastic characterization of models of choice over menus to be able to better compare and contrast different models empirically. In this paper, I do this task for the standard model, which would be an extension of the random utility model to the realm of choice over menus. In particular, I provide the necessary and sufficient conditions, i.e., axioms on choice data over menus for it to be consistent with a population of decision-makers each of whom behaves according to the standard model. The axioms that characterize the model are the axiom of revealed stochastic preferences over singletons and three rationality axioms. (shrink)

My goal is to help us see the importance of social connections to social change in even our conceptual toolbox regarding social transformation. I compare and summarize two discussions about the political value of hope: one in Western modern political thought and the other in non-violent movements and their subsequent philosophy. I follow Michelle Moody- Adams’ conviction that visionaries and intellectuals of constructive social movements ground political hope in collectives rather than in individuals, as Western political philosophy tends to do. (...) However, I suggest that the proper interpretation of a collectivist hope requires attention to the people with whom we hope. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue in favor of a structural turn in social contract theory. More precisely, I argue that dealing with the complex and dynamic nature of the social world requires an emphasis on social structures greater than what contractarians often consider. I take structures to be the dynamic and non-random networks of interdependence among all active components that shape society. I also constrain my focus to a growing body of literature on diversity that explores plausible contractarian alternatives given (...) the complexity of modern societies. I argue that shifting weight from diversity to structures in theorizing alternative contractarian frameworks would be an improvement. (shrink)

What I call "strategic injustice" involves a set of formal and informal regulatory rules and conventions that often lead to grossly unfair outcomes for a class of individuals despite their resistance. My goal in this paper is to provide the necessary conditions for such injustices and for eliminating their instances from our social practices. To do so, I follow Peter Vanderschraaf's analysis of circumstances of justice and expand his account by embedding "asymmetric conflictual coordination games" that summarize fair division problems (...) in a dynamic social network. I use the network effect on such coordination games to explain the emergence of stable exploitative behavior and conventions by a class of individuals even in the presence of restraining efforts by others. I conclude that such unfair conventions are resilient to uncoordinated individual actions and interventions. In fact, maintaining a rough equality itself turns into another coordination problem. Finally, I show that something similar to a social movement that restructures the network of social relations is necessary to solve such coordination problems. (shrink)

Luciano Floridi’s informational structural realism takes a constructionist attitude towards the problems of epistemology and metaphysics, but the question of the nature of the semantical component of his view remains vexing. In this paper, I propose to dispense with the semantical component of ISR completely. I outline a Syntactical version of ISR. The unified entropy-based framework of information has been adopted as the groundwork of SISR. To establish its realist component, SISR should be able to dissolve the latching problem. We (...) have to be able to account for the informational structures–reality relationship in the absence of the standard semantical resources. The paper offers a pragmatic solution to the latching problem. I also take pains to account for the naturalistic plausibility of this solution by grounding it in the recent computational neuroscience of the predictive coding and the free energy principle. (shrink)

Previous studies claim there are few olfactory metaphors cross-linguistically, especially compared to metaphors originating in the visual and auditory domains. We show olfaction can be a source for metaphor and metonymy in a lesser-described language that has rich lexical resources for talking about odors. In Seri, an isolate language of Mexico spoken by indigenous hunter-gatherers, we find a novel metaphor for emotion never previously described – “anger stinks”. In addition, distinct odor verbs are used metaphorically to distinguish volitional vs. non-volitional (...) states-of-affairs. Finally, there is ample olfactory metonymy in Seri, especially prevalent in names for plants, but also found in names for insects and artifacts. This calls for a re-examination of better-known languages for the overlooked role olfaction may play in metaphor and metonymy. The Seri language illustrates how valuable data from understudied languages can be in highlighting novel ways by which people conceptualize themselves and their world. (shrink)

Estimation of discharge flowing through rivers is an important aspect of water resource planning and management. The most common way to address this concern is to develop stage-discharge relationships at various river sections. Various computational techniques have been applied to develop discharge ratings and improve the accuracy of estimated discharges. In this regard, the present study explores the application of the novel hybrid multigene genetic programming-generalized reduced gradient technique for estimating river discharges for steady as well as unsteady flows. It (...) also compares the MGGP-GRG performance with those of the commonly used optimization techniques. As a result, the rating curves of eight different rivers were developed using the conventional method, evolutionary algorithm, the modified honey bee mating optimization algorithm, artificial neural network, MGGP, and the hybrid MGGP-GRG technique. The comparison was conducted on the basis of several widely used performance evaluation criteria. It was observed that no model outperformed others for all datasets and metrics considered, which demonstrates that the best method may be different from one case to another one. Nevertheless, the ranking analysis indicates that the hybrid MGGP-GRG model overall performs the best in developing stage-discharge relationships for both single-value and loop rating curves. For instance, the hybrid MGGP-GRG technique improved sum of square of errors obtained by the conventional method between 4.5% and 99% for six out of eight datasets. Furthermore, EA, the MHBMO algorithm, and artificial intelligence models performed satisfactorily in some of the cases, while the idea of combining MGGP with GRG reveals that this hybrid method improved the performance of MGGP in this specific application. Unlike the black box nature of ANN, MGGP offers explicit equations for stream rating curves, which may be counted as one of the advantages of this AI model. (shrink)

This book draws on advances in computational neuroscience and theoretical biology to provide a clear and accessible agentive account of the nature of causality and scientific explanations. Instead of attempting to establish the elements of scientific explanation, such as causality, in a reality unadulterated by a human perspective, this book relies on scientific facts about cognition to describe the structure of agency at from a distinctly human perspective. The book draws on the Free Energy Principle to reinforce the agency theory (...) of causality and extend it to an account of explanation as well. This principle The FEP not only provides a theoretical account of how self-organising systems engage with the causal structure of the environment, but it also offers a viable notion of agency and is compatible with the projectivist aspects of the agency theory. Scientific Explanation, Causality, and Agency will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in philosophy of science, philosophy of cognitive science, epistemology, computational neuroscience, and theoretical biology. (shrink)

This article is about a well-known anonymous folk story in the Malay-Indonesian world, called Hikayat Nabi Bercukur, found in various different languages across the region. The only scholarly conjecture about its origin is based on the copy of a Malay manuscript held in Leiden which has been deliberately blackened and struck through by a reader who stated in the margin that the story is written by a Rāfiḍī and should not be believed. Although earlier scholars mentioned the title or the (...) synopsis of this story in their works and bibliographical catalogues, the question “what is the origin of this story?” remained unanswered. In order to follow up on previous studies and to find an answer, this essay examines numerous original manuscripts and texts in various languages and provides a comparison between the Malay versions and their prototype. Also, to the best of my knowledge, the first edition and English translation of the prototype are presented. (shrink)

The traveling salesman problem is one of the most important issues in combinatorial optimization problems that are used in many engineering sciences and has attracted the attention of many scientists and researchers. In this issue, a salesman starts to move from a desired node called warehouse and returns to the starting place after meeting n customers provided that each customer is only met once. The aim of this issue is to determine a cycle with a minimum cost for this salesman. (...) One of the major weaknesses of the PSO algorithm in the classical version is that it gets stuck in local optimizations. Therefore, in the proposed algorithm, called MPSO, the best solution in the current iteration is also used in the movement step. In addition, a variety of local search algorithms are provided that are used when better answers are generated than before. Also, a new method for moving the particle towards the best particle is presented, which, in addition to probably increasing the quality of the new answer, prevents the premature convergence of the algorithm due to consideration of the concept of random. The results evaluated with the results of several metaheuristic algorithms in the literature show the efficiency of the MPSO algorithm because it has been able to achieve excellent solutions in most of these instances. (shrink)

Benacerraf has presented two problems for the philosophy of mathematics. These are the problem of identification and the problem of representation. This paper aims to reconstruct the latter problem and to unpack its undermining bearing on the version of Ontic Structural Realism that frames scientific representations in terms of abstract structures. I argue that the dichotomy between mathematical structures and physical ones cannot be used to address the Benacerraf problem but strengthens it. I conclude by arguing that versions of OSR (...) that do not rely on mathematical frameworks for representational purposes need not be vulnerable to Benacerraf’s second problem. (shrink)

Social movements possess transformative and progressive power. In this paper, I argue that how this is so, or even if this is so, depends on one's explanatory framework. I consider three such explanatory frameworks for social movements: methodological individualism, collectivism, and complexity theory. In evaluating the various appeals and weaknesses of these frameworks, I show that complexity theory is uniquely poised to capture the complex and dynamic reality of the social world.

When researchers think about the interaction between language and emotion, they typically focus on descriptive emotion words. This review demonstrates that emotion can interact with language at many levels of structure, from the sound patterns of a language to its lexicon and grammar, and beyond to how it appears in conversation and discourse. Findings are considered from diverse subfields across the language sciences, including cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and conversation analysis. Taken together, it is clear that emotional expression is (...) finely tuned to language-specific structures. Future emotion research can better exploit cross-linguistic variation to unravel possible universal principles operating between language and emotion. (shrink)

An in-depth portrait of the great Muslim philosopher introduces readers to the fascinating and controversial ideas that landed Averroes in hot water on more than one occasion. Original.

The communicative affordances of the participatory web have opened up new and multifarious channels for the proliferation of hate. In particular, women navigating the cybersphere seem to be the target of a disproportionate amount of hostility. This paper explores the contexts, approaches and conceptual synergies around research on online misogyny within the new communicative paradigm of social media communication. The paper builds on the core principle that online misogyny is demonstrably and inherently a discourse; therefore, the field is envisaged at (...) the intersection of digital media scholarship, discourse theorization and critical feminist explications. As an ever-burgeoning phenomenon, online hate has been approached from a range of disciplinary perspectives but has only been partially mapped at the interface of meaning making contents/processes and new mediation technologies. The paper aims to advance the state of the art by investigating online hate in general, and misogyny in particular, from the vantage point of Social Media Critical Discourse Studies ; an emerging model of theorization and operationalization of research combining tenets from Critical Discourse Studies with scholarship in digital media and technology research. Our SM-CDS approach to online misogyny demarcates itself from insinuation whereby the phenomenon is reduced to digital communicative affordances per se and argues in favor of a double critical contextualization of research findings at both digital participatory as well as social and cultural levels. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Tenth-Century Arabic Interpretation of Plato's Cosmology MAJID FAKIIRY OF PLATO'STHIRTY-SIXDIALOG~Y~Sonly the Timaeus is devoted entirely to cosmological questions. The influence of this dialogue on the development of cosmological ideas in antiquity and the Middle Ages was very great. At a time when the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science in Western Europe had almost vanished, the Timaeus was the only Greek cosmological work to circulate freely in (...) learned circles. The translation and commentary of Chalcidius (c. 350) made the Timaeus available to Latin scholars, at least up to c. 53. But interest in the Timae~s was sustained for a long time before that. The lost commentary of Posidonius of Apamea (d. 51 B.C.), the De animae procreatione in Timeo of Plutarch (d. A.D. 125), the commentary of Proclus (d. 485), extant up to 44d,1 are the most important links in this continuous chain of Platonic cosmological exegesis in antiquity. In the Arabic tradition, the Timaeus had a decisive impact on the development of cosmological ideas also. Plutarch and Proclus were familiar names in the history of Platonic and post-Platonic thought, but I am not aware that the Stoic Posidonius, whom Zeller has described as ".the most universal mind that Greece had seen since the time of Aristotle," 2 was known to the Arabs, or that any mention of his commentary on the Timaeus is to be found in the Arabic sources. General interest in Platonism was an early feature of the philosophical wave which swept the Islamic learned world in the 8th century, and Zeller may be right in saying that it was the Platonic School of Athens which gave Muslim Neoplatonism its peculiar stamp. 3 One of the earliest translators of philosophical texts into Arabic, Yah.ia (b. al-Bit.riq) who flourished in the 2rid half of the 8th century, is credited with the translation of the Timaeus, later retranslated or revised by Hunain (b. Ish~q; d. 873) and Yahia (b. 'Adi and not, as Sarton has it, b. 'Ali; d. 974).~ In addition, the following Platonic dialogues appear to have been translated into Arabic: The Sophistes, the Parmenides, the Cratylus, the Euthydemus, the Republic, the Statesman, the Laws and the Crito. The determination of the actual translator of each work poses serious difficulties. In an autobiographical tract, Hunain simply reports that either he or his disciple Is~ (b. Yahia) translated these works for his patron Muhammad (b. Cf. A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plata's Timaeu~ (Oxford, 1928),pp. 34f., and George Sarton, History o] Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1959),I, 428f. Cf. E. Zeller,OutEnesof the History oSGreek Philosophy (N.Y., 1955),p. 268. sIbid., p. 329. ' Cf. al-Fihrist (Cairo, N~D.),p. 358. [15] 16 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Musa), the astrologer.~ Other writers corroborate or supplement this account. Thus Ibn al-Nadim (d. 997), ascribes to Hunain the interpretation (tarsi'r) of the Republic, to him and to Ibn 'Adi the translation of the Laws, and to his son Ish.iq the translation of the Sophistes, together with the commentary of Olympiodorus2 The Crito appears to have been translated also by Yahia (b. Adi), and extensive excerpts from it and the Phaedo are often quoted in the Arabic sources in connection with the trial and execution of Socrates. Another difficulty is raised by the fact that none of the Arabic versions of these dialogues which have come down to us, either as separate works or parts of general commentaries such as the Laws, the Timaeus and the Republic, are complete, so that the inference is inescapable that, as borne out by Hunain's own testimony, it was Galen's paraphrases or compendia of these works, or at any rate those which were translated into Arabic within the School of Hunain, that are actually referred to in our sources.7 It is not, however, with the general diffusion of Platonism in the Muslim world that I am primarily concerned here, but rather with the impact of Platonic cosmological theory as illustrated in the writings of Abu Bakr Muhammad (b. Zakariya al-Razi; d., c. 932), the Rhases of Latin authors, the greatest... (shrink)

Originally published in 1958. Occasionalism is generally associated in the history of philosophy with the name of Malébranche. But long before this time, the Muslim Theologians of the ninth and tenth centuries had developed an occasionalist metaphysics of atoms and accidents. Arguing that a number of distinctively Islamic concepts such as fatalism and the surrender of personal endeavour cannot be fully understood except in the perspective of the occasionalist world view of Islam, the volume also discusses the attacks on Occasionalism (...) made by Averroes and St. Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

The first comprehensive survey of Islamic philosophy from the seventh century to the present, this classic discusses Islamic thought and its effect on the cultural aspects of Muslim life. Fakhry shows how Islamic philosophy has followed from the earliest times a distinctive line of development, which gives it the unity and continuity that are the marks of the great intellectual movements of history.

This book consists of a systematic analysis of the basic concepts of Islamic ethics and is based on a vast amount of material in Arabic which is not easily accessible to Western scholars, especially those who have no knowledge of the Arabic language.

The author examines the development of the concept of justice in Arabic philosophical ethics, which culminates in the attempt by Miskawayh to harmonize Plato's concept of what it means to be just with Aristotle's concept of acting justly. Miskawayh's contribution, which draws upon Neo-Platonic and Stoic authors of late antiquity, is shown to shed light on possible modes of interpreting the ethical doctrines of Plato and Aristotle and even to point the way to the solution of some exegetical problems raised (...) by contemporary scholars. (shrink)

This book, along with its companion volume, Democracy as the Political Empowerment of the Citizen, relates the democratic potential of the latest electronic technologies to the idea of direct-participatory democracy. Taking a critical look at the past and present theories of democracy, this volume clarifies the original meaning of the idea of democracy and explains the distortions it has suffered throughout its long history.

The relationship between Carnap’s Logical Syntax of Language and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus has been interpreted in several ways during past decades. One of the interpretations has gained keen advocates among Carnap scholars. It was originally provoked by what Caranp said in LSL, and it consists of two parts. First, it indicates that in TLP the possibility of speaking about the logical form of a language within the same language had been foresworn by Wittgenstein, but Carnap proved him wrong by producing (...) a book written exactly in the manner which had been proscribed by Wittgenstein. This is the debate about the possibility of speaking about logical form. Second, Wittgenstein’s dogmatism with regard to the existence of a unique correct grammar at the foundation of the language has been contrasted with Carnap’s open-mindedness in conceiving a boundless ocean of possibilities for constructing logical systems. Interestingly enough, Wittgenstein rambled with rage in reaction to Carnap’s view about the LSL-TLP relationship. But unlike Carnap’s view, which led to a dominant interpretation of the relationship, Wittgenstein’s testimony about the case has been strangely ignored in the history of analytic philosophy. In this paper, I try to make an inquiry about the grounds for Wittgenstein’s dissatisfaction with the Carnapian reading of the LSL-TLP relationship. I will show that Wittgenstein was not totally unfair in his judgment, and that some salient aspects of LSL could be best understood in the light, or rather the gloom, of TLP, and bear a significant resemblance to it. This, however, does not need to diminish the logical and historical significance of LSL. (shrink)

The application of geometry to physics has provided us with new insightful information about many physical theories such as classical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum geometry. The geometry also plays an important role in foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information. In this work we discuss a geometric framework for mixed quantum states represented by density matrices, where the quantum phase space of density matrices is equipped with a symplectic structure, an almost complex structure, and a compatible Riemannian metric. This (...) compatible triple allow us to investigate arbitrary quantum systems. We will also discuss some applications of the geometric framework. (shrink)

As cardiopatias congênitas são caracterizadas por anormalidade na estrutura cardiovascular, presente desde a vida fetal, sendo estimados 30 mil casos por ano, no Brasil. Apresentam alta taxa de mortalidade, requerendo, muitas vezes, hospitalizações, intervenções e cirurgias. É necessário atentar para necessidades das figuras maternas e paternas e suas formas de enfrentamento, pois fazem parte do suporte na recuperação da criança. Este estudo transversal objetivou identificar as estratégias de enfrentamento adotadas pelos pais, durante a hospitalização da criança, verificar se existe diferença (...) entre os gêneros. Foram avaliados 20 cuidadores, em acompanhamento ao filho hospitalizado para tratamento de cardiopatia congênita. Responderam questionário sociodemográfico e Escala de Enfrentamento de Problemas. Verificou-se que não há diferença na adoção de estratégias entre cuidadores materno e paterno, entretanto observou-se correlação entre fatores sociodemográficos e predominância do enfrentamento focado no problema e religiosidade. (shrink)